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Devotion

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Devotion

By: Louisa Young
Narrated by: Eve Karpf
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About this listen

From the bestselling author of My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You and The Heroes’ Welcome, Louisa Young's Devotion is a novel of family, love, race and politics set during the electric change of the 1930s.

Tom loves Nenna. Nenna loves her father. Her father loves Mussolini.

Ideals and convictions are not always so clear in the murky years between the end of the First World War and the beginning of the Second. For Tom and Kitty Locke, children of the damaged WW1 generation, visiting their cousin Nenna in Rome is a pure joy. For their adoptive parents Nadine and Riley, though, the ground is still shifting underfoot.

Nobody knew in 1919 that the children they were bearing would be just ripe for the next war in 1939; nobody knew, in 1935, the implications of an Italian Jewish family supporting Mussolini.

Meanwhile Peter Locke and Mabel Zachary have found each other again together in London, itself a city reborn but riddled with its own intolerances. As the heat rises across Europe, voices grow louder and everyone must brace once more to decide what should bring them together, and what must drive them apart.

Music composed by Robert Lockhart. Used by permission of Faber Music Ltd.

©2016 Louisa Young (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers Limited Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Political Women's Fiction Italy War

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Critic reviews

‘Young has conjured up another rich historical novel and I longed to know the fate of this tragic cast of friends. These characters demand devotion — they’ll get it, too’ The Times

‘Elegantly written and compulsively readable, Devotion manages to be both thrilling and heartfelt – a real treasure of a book’ Jami Attenberg
All stars
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The third of the sequence and as fine as ever ! Louisa tackles a broader picture and triumphs, the young love is painfully accurate, the racism( or racialism) is so well described, anti-semitism is investigated microscopically and alarmingly. A wonderful piece of writing, Mrs Orris (Peter's mother) is such a minor character but written so beautifully , like admiring a miniature by an Old Master.
I almost felt I was living back then/there pre World War 2, I felt claustrophobic and trapped. I loved this book.

Heartbreakingly excellent

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A wonderful story of the tragic and unbalanced build up to World War 2 - of love, pain and real relationships.

Thank you Louisa!

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I loved My Dearest, and then Heroes Return. It took a while to get into Devotion as I had so loved the characters in the first 2 novels and I had to adapt to Riley and co. taking a back seat. But as events in Italy began to follow their inevitable course I was drawn into this story, really felt for the characters. I have never read a family saga before, but I would love there to be a fourth in this series. The writing is subtle, perceptive and tender. The narration of this audio book is so good I forgot I was listening and remember the story now as if I read it and with the voices of the characters in my head, not the narrator.

A moving family saga

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I was so pleased to find a third instalment of the lives of these characters I've come to love (my dear, I wanted to tell you; the heroes' welcome), and this certainly doesn't disappoint. The tremors of war grow alongside the children's journey into maturity, and I found myself every bit as drawn in to the perfectly expressed internal lives of the characters as ever I have been in this series.
The concentration on the growth of Fascism in Italy I found very educational and stirring, and the use of chronological letter writing to tell the story kept me on tenterhooks throughout as the dangers steadily increased. (Reminded me a lot of the film, Life is Beautiful, in places. I've never seen Tea with Mussolini, partly because I've feared I wouldn't understand it: well, now I feel I have more grounding!)
Equally well wrought was the character of Mabel, I felt; certain passages about the indignities she faced and faces were striking counterpoints to Riley's feelings of otherness in previous installments. Brilliantly narrated by Eve Karpf (initially I missed Dan Stevens' narration because his is the only voice of Riley that sounds authentic, but this novel feels more like the women's story, so Eve's sympathetic intonations - and convincing Italian - felt very fitting): I will now seek out her other performances.
Another beautiful novel from Louisa Young, with an ambiguous but hopeful conclusion.

A root through history

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I really enjoyed the previous two books and had high hopes of this one but was disappointed. It just goes on and on, with nothing much happening, for what seems forever.

The narrator does a good job, especially with the Italian parts, but struggles to make the uninteresting interesting. Why didn’t the editor do a better job? What’s the point of pages of pedestrian thought processes which add nothing to the story?

The pace is stilted and the relationship between the two main characters (Tom and Nenna) verges on the tedious, with no hint of passion to convince the reader of their love. It isn’t helped by the narrator using an irritating voice for Nenna which makes you wish she’d just go away.

Sorry, can’t recommend this one.

Well narrated but much too long and rather dull

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the previous narrator was better. the author seemed to forget her own previous plots. nadine is stated as having no brother but didn't she meet riley when her brother knocked him into a pond with a snow ball in the first book??? disappointed.

least good of the 3

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